Pilot programs are not the real thing, warned Michael Lewis, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, testifying at a House transportation subcommittee on March 7. Colorado completed a successful four-month pilot last April.

The half-cent sales tax will fund new rebate programs for zero and near zero-emissions vehicles and multimodal transportation. Opponents claim the privilege tax, as it is called, violates the state constitution because revenues aren't used for roads.

A bill to increase both gas and diesel taxes by five cents in Alabama has passed its first committee on a voice vote and goes to the full House of Representatives on Thursday. The bill indexes both taxes using only two-cent increments.

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office places the spotlight on the trucking industry in terms of the social, health ,and environmental costs it imposes on society but does not pay for, i.e., externalities.

Making up only seven percent of U.S. interstate miles, the future of toll roads is bright according to Brooking's Robert Puentes and Diane Rehm's other guests in a 52-minute, wide ranging discussion on gas taxes, toll roads, and privatization.

A $9 billion patch bill was drafted by Sen. Finance Comm. Chair Ron Wyden to continue transportation spending to Dec. 31. Most of the funds come from a change in how Individual Retirement Accounts are administered and a heavy truck use tax increase.

While tolling will not fill the Highway Trust Fund gap, it can finance improvements for specific interstate highways that would otherwise be funded by a sustainable trust fund, not one approaching insolvency. Why not allow states the option to toll?

State transportation leaders are scrambling to increase funding as MAP-21 draws to its expiration on Oct. 1. Interstate tolling is being eyed by more than a few. While the Wisconsin Assembly likes the idea, Gov. Scott Walker rejects it.

How best to "plug the growing hole" in the Highway Trust Fund which provides the federal revenue for roads and transit: increase the gas tax, new vehicle miles traveled fees, more road tolls, or "corporate tax reform"? All but one is a user fee.

USA Today does some interesting analysis of the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and comes to some startling conclusions about how historically low it is when considered with vehicle miles driven and per capita income.

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